The Old Graveyard (Pioneer Cemetery)
Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This small historic cemetery, also called the "Irvine Family Cemetery," predates the establishment of Terrell by more than 20 years. The first burial was that of Robert Alexander, nephew of W. D. Irvine, in 1851. Now located within the city limits, the cemetery began on land owned by the pioneer Irvine family. It contains the graves of Irvine family members, their neighbors, and descendants, many of whom were responsible for founding this community. The cemetery also contains several unmarked graves. The last known burial to take place here was in 1956.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This small burying ground, also called the Irvine Family Cemetery, predates the founding of Terrell by more than two decades. Its first grave, dug in 1851 for young Robert Alexander, lay on land held by the pioneer Irvine family, and it gathered the family, their neighbors, and descendants—many of them founders of the community. Now ringed by the city, it holds several unmarked graves and saw its last known burial in 1956.
Why it matters
A pioneer graveyard older than the town around it preserves the names and reach of the settlers whose homesteads became a Texas community.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Alexander
- · W. D. Irvine
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Robert A. Terrell Home
Terrell, TX
This octagon-shaped house was built in 1864 for Robert A. Terrell (1820–1881), a pioneer settler whose 1845 log cabin once stood here and for whom the town of Terrell was named. Octagon houses were a briefly fashionable American experiment, believed to offer better light and air, and few survive in Texas today. The home passed through a succession of owners after 1897.
Robert A. Terrell
Terrell, TX
Robert Adams Terrell wandered from Tennessee through Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana before reaching the Republic of Texas around 1840. As a surveyor he located headright land grants across North Texas—paid in vast tracts of land—served in Republic expeditions, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. The town of Terrell rose on land he had surveyed and took his name.
Frank Reaugh
Terrell, TX
Frank Reaugh (1860–1945) fell in love with wild range cattle as a boy on his family's Kaufman County cotton farm, where trail herds passed close by in the 1870s. Working his way through art study in St. Louis and Europe, he settled in Dallas in 1890 and became the great pastel chronicler of the Texas Longhorn, the western trails, and the open range just as they were vanishing. His paintings now hang in Austin, Dallas, and beyond.
First Christian Church of Terrell
Terrell, TX
Organized in 1876 with fewer than two dozen charter members, the First Christian Church of Terrell met in borrowed rooms before building its first sanctuary here in 1881. Explosive growth—membership rose tenfold in less than twenty years—drove a succession of ever-grander buildings, from a steepled, stained-glass structure in 1895 to the brick sanctuary dedicated in 1923. Its expanding facilities trace the prosperity of a growing North Texas railroad town.